When Washington became a state in 1889, a legislative committee designed a seal showing Mount Rainier, grazing sheep, wheat fields, and the port of Tacoma. The committee then took the emblem to a jewelry store in Olympia to be engraved, but the proprietor felt that the design was too complicated. He suggested a simpler design consisting of a portrait of George Washington (taken from an advertisement), encircled by the words The Seal of the State of Washington and the date 1889. This was accepted by the legislature, in a slightly modified form, on July 4, 1889.